No matter what your job is, it’s important to be skilled with the tools of your particular trade. That’s especially true if those tools happen to be firearms, which is why being part of Japan’s police or Self-Defense Forces means you’re in for a lot of time on the firing range.

It seems at least one member of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force needs a little more practice, though, since one of his shots missed the target he was aiming for and hit a civilian home instead.

The brand-new Death Note TV drama just made its debut, and it left us feeling a little lukewarm, what with its rushed pacing and less-than-compelling changes from the manga and anime source material. Still, we probably shouldn’t be too harsh in our criticisms. After all, at just one episode in, there’s still plenty of time for the newest live-action adaptation to turn it around and deliver a portion of the thrills the original Death Note did.

Plus, we’d like to stay on the good side of the series’ death gods, since this creepy photo has us worried that maybe they can manifest in real life, and might even be watching us right now.

If you’re one of the 2.5 gajillion readers (Mar. 2015 estimate) looking at this article right now on a desktop or laptop, you might want to grab a mobile device and take a walk while reading this time around.

Safely outside? Okay now enjoy this video which shows what might be lurking inside your computer right now.

Japanese horror films are their own special brand of awesome. Movies like The Ring and The Grudge will sometimes make you roll your eyes with their cheesy acting and special effects, but at the same time contain certain horrifying scenes that will stick with you in your nightmares for weeks to come.

The latest installment in The Grudge series, Grudge: The Final has just come out in Japan, advertised by commercials airing all over. However, one commercial received so many complaints about it being “way too scary” that it was taken down and replaced with something more tame.

Are you brave enough to watch the original commercial? Then read on to get your chance.

Takeshima is a picturesque spot off the coast of Aichi Prefecture. Connected to the mainland by a 387-metre (1,270-foot) causeway, the tiny island is covered in lush greenery, and the only building is a shrine in the centre, which is said to be almost 900 years old.

But after one Twitter user uploaded some photos from a recent trip to the island, other netizens were quick to point out something rather creepy about one of the snaps. Let’s see if you can spot it!

There’s something super-creepy about mannequins, isn’t there? From certain angles, they almost look human, even the ones that are missing limbs or heads. And don’t get us started on child mannequins! Those things give us the wibbles, especially when they pop upin random public places…

We hope you and your mothers all had great Mother’s Days this year and excellent presents were exchanged. Of course, sometimes the best present isn’t something you bought at the store but a hand-made work of art demonstrating your love for your mother, though we doubt anyone is going to complain about a new PlayStation 4.

We’ve already seen some of the most awesome (and awkward) Mother’s Day illustrations you can find at 7-Eleven, but today we have something slightly more…horrifying. This portrait made the rounds on Twitter in Japan last week, inducing laughter and nightmares!

How-Old.net, the age-guessing website from Microsoft, has been gaining huge amounts of attention online recently, with some people pleased by the app’s flattery, and others incensed by the suggestion that they might look a little more crumbly than they really are.

But the app also has a much creepier, darker side to it – it can (apparently) detect the faces of ghosts, and tell us what age they were when they passed on…

Kanagawa Prefecture has some of the most popular beaches in Japan, especially along the section of the coast known as Shonan. A magnet for both locals and day trippers from Tokyo, when the sun is shining you’ll find a cross section of Japanese society in and around the water, including surfers, partying college students, couples, and families,

And, some claim, a ghost that was captured in the background of this photo a foreign traveler took of his daughter.

Remember when you were a child and you tried to dig a hole to China? Although our chances of popping out anywhere close to China were not even remotely possible, a surprising discovery at a construction site will give you a pretty good reason to not try.

A crater suddenly opened up that is slowly but surely growing in size, and we aren’t talking about a simple sinkhole either. The lingering smell of sulfur that hangs in the air is an immediate warning sign that something deeper is going on.

I was a little bummed to learn today that David Lynch was pulling himself out of the new Twin Peaks series. Luckily, at the exact same time I came across something to satiate the macabre void left by that announcement.

The following is a public service announcement from China’s CCTV which was posted on YouTube on 4 April. We think you’ll agree that a casual viewing will leave you with more questions than answers.

With some animals, their cuteness is debatable. For example, a segment of the population in Japan can’t seem to get enough of the giant isopod, while others can’t get far enough away from the gigantic deep sea bugs. Frogs, too, depending on who you ask, are either adorable or gross.

But there seems to be a consensus that penguins definitely fall into the cute category, what with the silly aura of their formalwear-like appearance and waddling movements. Really, ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a penguin that didn’t make you smile?

And then ask yourself, when was the last time you looked into a penguin’s terrifying, terrifying mouth?

Studio Ghibli fans all over the world love visiting places that remind them of their iconic anime films like Laputa: Castle in the Sky or Spirited Away. But Japanese netizens recently discovered a home in Mexico City that was not quite the ode to Hayao Miyazaki films as it seemed. At first glance, netizens thought they were looking at video evidence of the existence of soot sprites from My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, but soon realized the horrifying truth that the home was crawling with spiders.

Japan is in the middle of a luxurytrainboom, but that doesn’t mean every station in the country is a palace of creature comforts. In the most rural areas, the station is often little more than an unstaffed slab of concrete poured next to the rails.

Things are just a bit more infrastructure-intensive at Tsutsuishi Station, however. That’s because while its above-ground facilities may not be much to look at, the platform is located at the bottom of a stairwell that descends 40 meters (131 feet) into the earth.

The very first job that brought me to Japan as a gainfully employed adult was teaching at a private English school. While most of our customers were in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, we also offered kids’ classes, even for preschool-aged children.

With young learners, the first hurdle to get past was for them to not freak out about talking with someone from a different country. While that might sound horribly racist, there just aren’t that many opportunities to meet people from other cultures in Japan, especially in a child’s daily life, and the first meeting was usually a little intimidating for them (the company policy that didn’t allow foreign staff to speak Japanese in front of the customers probably didn’t help in this regard).

Thankfully, it usually only took a couple of minutes for the kids to see that non-Japanese instructors aren’t terrifying monsters. Unfortunately, this startling commercial for a chain of children’s English schools in Japan only takes 15 seconds to visually imply that, yes, actually, they are.

We heard that there is a particularly alarming girls’ fashion mobile game lurking in the app store, so in the spirit of RocketNews24, we decided that we had to try it out for ourselves. The game in question is Mary&Ange II, an updated version of, well Mary&Ange, a simple dress-up game for iOS and Android produced by Halcon. The game seemed innocuous enough from the download page, even though reviews were mixed. However, little did we know there was a hidden secret inside…

In what might be the first ever case of one of those viral cryptozoological animal videos actually being real, a bunch of Indonesian palm oil plant workers recently recorded a run-in with some sort of crazy-looking, hairless werebeast that supposedly charged them.

Michelangelo once said he sees “in every block of marble, a statue as plain as though it stood before him.” He speaks the truth; sometimes you can’t help but see a masterful work of art begging to be exposed from everyday objects. Especially when the item has already been anthropomorphized with a smiley face!

The eternal artist doesn’t allow such a great opportunity to pass them by. A Japanese ice cream called “Panapp” provides an excellent chance to sculpt a face in your dessert. It’s the snack that smiles right back, until you scream your face off!

The key difference between being an idol singer and a pop diva is warmth. Even if you’ve got perfect pitch and unshakable rhythm, if you want to succeed as an idol, you still need a heart-melting smile. Really, as long as you’ve got the smile, idol fans will even cut you a lot of slack on not having the other two.

So it’s a little unusual to gaze upon this trio of anime idols and feel a chill run down your spine, and not just because they’re made of snow.

The town of Fukusaki in Hyogo Prefecture has taken a rather unusual direction when it comes to public art. Namely, the town spent roughly 3 million yen (US$25,000) to install a red, mechanical kappa in the small pond at Tsujikawayama Park (辻川山公園). The strange fixture has become a local attraction, and is scary-looking enough to make children cry!

Just what could have driven the town to install such a creepy mechanical model?